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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29232327">Is There a Line That I Could Just Go Cross?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforthestars/pseuds/lookingforthestars'>lookingforthestars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - High School, Amy Santiago Loves Jake Peralta, Barely There Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Jake Peralta Loves Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta is Bad at Feelings, Sorry not sorry I love tropes, This is honestly the tropiest thing I've ever written, complete fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:08:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,846</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29232327</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforthestars/pseuds/lookingforthestars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not mad that you kissed me. I’m mad that you kissed me and immediately told me it didn’t mean anything. I’ve…” She bites her lip, and her voice is barely a mumble when she says, “I’ve never kissed anyone before, okay?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jake Peralta &amp; Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Is There a Line That I Could Just Go Cross?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Amy Santiago is beautiful.</p><p>That’s just, like, an objective fact. The first time he saw her standing in the cafeteria, a metal lunchbox in one hand and a thermos in the other, brows furrowed like she was dissecting the hierarchy of the school to figure out where she was most likely to be welcomed, Jake thought she was beautiful. Her smile when his best friend Charles had jumped up and invited her to sit at their table only cemented that fact.</p><p>But man, it’s so different now. His initial appraisal of her doesn’t hold a candle to the Amy that’s in front of him just a few months later. Her shiny hair is all the more appealing as she repeatedly flicks it over her shoulder, strands continuously sweeping her face from her animated motions. That beautiful skin is tinged slightly red from enthusiasm, her bright smile amplified by a thousand. He swears Amy Santiago literally glows, sometimes.</p><p>Jake has dated beautiful girls before. Hell, Sophia and Bernice were two of the hottest girls in school, by anyone’s standards. But he doesn’t think he ever felt like this, like he’s in the presence of something special and he’s content just to be in the general vicinity of this much amazingness.</p><p>So, yeah. He might be screwed.</p><p>“And then he asked me to choose the mandatory font for our senior projects! He wanted my font opinion, Jake!” Her voice is so high-pitched he thinks it could be classified as a squeal, and it snaps him out of his goofy, lovesick reverie. “Jake! Are you even listening?”</p><p>“What font did you choose?” he says easily. Honestly, even if he hadn’t caught the last bit of her monologue, it would have been safe to assume that Amy was talking about fonts. They’re her third favorite subject.</p><p>How the hell is he this into her? <em>Doesn’t matter</em>, he thinks as her face melts from mild annoyance back into excitement. He is. He really, really is.</p><p>“Helvetica,” they say at the same time because he knows her favorite font, somehow, and wouldn’t have even needed to ask if he wasn’t scrambling to cover up his daydreaming. Wait, is it daydreaming if it happens at night? He’ll have to ask her that another time.</p><p>Her grin widens, just a little, like it always does when he remembers a random detail about her. He can’t remember his mom’s birthday, but Amy’s favorite type of sushi and the name of her first pet are tucked away in a folder in the back of his brain because…well, mostly because of that smile, he guesses.</p><p>Amy’s story about spending her free period assisting Mr. Holt seems to have come to its conclusion. She leans her weight back on one arm, kicking her feet out slightly to make the water ripple. Her jeans are rolled up to her shins, her painted toenails barely visible under the surface of the dark water. It was about four hundred times louder by the pool earlier, when Gina’s party was in full swing, but most of the guests are gone now, even though they can still hear Gina drunkenly shouting Jay-Z lyrics from her living room.</p><p>He doesn’t suggest going back inside, and neither does she, and it’s moments like this that he wonders. If it means anything that she’s comfortable out here, alone, with him, in the silence. If she’s content just being with him, being around him. Well, that’s not exactly what he wonders; he already knows the answer is yes. It’s <em>why</em>. Is it because she’s his best friend, or…something else?</p><p>Amy looks at him, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder, the moonlight falling on her at just the right angle that Jake can’t even think straight. She’s smiling, but it drops when she meets his eyes, sees god knows what on his face, and when she parts her lips like she’s going to say something and then doesn’t, Jake just goes for it.</p><p>Her mouth is cold and she tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream, which she had instead of beer because <em>we’re underage and drinking is illegal, Jake, what if we get caught</em>? He’s not mad about it, the taste or how soft her lips are or — fuck.</p><p>It takes him so much longer than it should to realize that Amy is dead stiff against him. He practically jumps away from her (in the wrong direction — he has to grasp the stone ledge to keep himself from falling into the pool) and the part-startled, part-confused expression on her face makes his heart drop.</p><p>He’s such a <em>jerk</em>. She was just hanging out with a friend, and he made a clearly unwelcome move without even asking, without giving her time to let him down. He wants to punch himself in the face.</p><p>“Ames…” Even the nickname feels too intimate right now, so he shakes his head and starts again. “Amy, I’m sorry. That was…I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry. Let’s forget it happened, okay?”</p><p>He wants to say <em>I’m sorry</em> about six hundred more times, but her shoulders tense up and he uses every ounce of his self-control to stop talking. She can barely look him in the eyes when she says, “Yeah, okay,” and before he really registers it she’s up and disappearing into the house.</p><p>Being impulsive has usually worked out pretty well for Jake, even if horrifies the rule-oriented Amy Santiago, but this. Is bad. He swings and misses all the time, and he can usually shrug it off, but this doesn’t feel shrug-offable. This feels like the end of the world as he knows it.</p><p>Jake beats himself up for another ten minutes before he works up the nerve to face Amy again, but she’s gone. “She said she was tired,” Rosa explains with a shrug, but the sideways glare she gives him later suggests she knows more than she lets on.</p><hr/><p>Amy doesn’t text him all weekend. Jake texts her gifs, mostly, just trying to break the tension and make everything go back to normal because this is <em>hell</em>. On Monday she’s not at school, which sets off all kinds of alarms in his brain, because Amy wouldn’t miss class if she had the plague.</p><p>After a full day of quietly losing his mind, Jake finds himself in front of Amy’s door, knocking too loudly against the white-painted wood. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but he needs to make sure she’s okay, because everything feels topsy-turvy without her and Jake — the physical manifestation of chaos — never realized until just now how much he relies on Amy’s stability to ground him.</p><p>She frowns when she opens the door, which isn’t a great start, but she doesn’t look sick, which is sort of a relief and sort of just more confusing. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“I came to check on you,” he says, even though it seems like it should be obvious. “You didn’t come to school, I thought you got caught in a Godzilla attack or something.”</p><p>Amy rolls her eyes. “King Kong got him. All good. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jake.”</p><p>“Wait!” He sticks his foot in the door, wincing as the sharp corner collides with his sneaker. Amy looks slightly guilty but does not immediately apologize, which is very unlike her but not unwarranted. “Amy, if this is about…you know, the kiss…” Jake feels a full-body cringe, because he would rather get his foot slammed in a door fifty times than talk about his feelings, but he has to. He can’t stand another minute of this. “Seriously, Ames, I’m so sorry. It was a huge mistake. Consent is important, and I was a huge douchebag to kiss you without asking if it was okay-.”</p><p>“Oh my god, Jake, that’s not even what I’m mad about!” she interrupts, her knuckles going white where they’re curved around the edge of the door.</p><p>“It’s not?”</p><p>“I mean yeah, you should have asked me, but…” Amy sighs heavily, looking at the tiled floor. “I’m not mad that you kissed me. I’m mad that you kissed me and immediately told me it didn’t <em>mean</em> anything. I’ve…” She bites her lip, and her voice is barely a mumble when she says, “I’ve never kissed anyone before, okay?”</p><p>This is revelatory information to Jake. He’d seen her and Teddy Wells walking together in the hallway a few times (as much as he could see through his blurry, jealousy-tinted vision, at any rate) and just assumed they were making out under the bleachers like everyone else. Of course, Amy Santiago never did anything without two months of deliberation and a binder, so maybe it wasn’t <em>that</em> shocking. “Seriously?”</p><p>She clearly mistakes his surprise for the beginning of a joke, because her face sours and she snaps, “Yeah, Jake! And I didn’t want my first kiss to be with someone who doesn’t even like me back!”</p><p>He feels like an even bigger asshole, now, because Amy deserved to have an amazing first kiss with someone that she really cared about, not some idiot who…</p><p>His thoughts come to a crashing halt as he processes the full implication of her words. “Wait. What do you mean, like you back?”</p><p>The anger drains from her features, and her brows furrow deeply. “What?”</p><p>“You said you didn’t want your first kiss to be with someone who didn’t like you back,” Jake explains slowly, still not entirely sure that he didn’t hallucinate the last part of that sentence. “What does that mean?”</p><p>Her cheeks stain dark red. “No!” she practically shouts, jabbing her finger at him. “You’re not allowed to ask questions, I’m the one who’s mad!”</p><p>Jake takes in her flustered expression, prays that it means what he thinks it means, and does one more stupid, impulsive thing. “You’re wrong,” he blurts, silencing Amy almost instantly. “I mean, I definitely screwed up. And I am sorry. But if you’re upset because your first kiss was with someone who didn’t like you…” He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, trying to soothe the uncomfortable pricking under his skin. “You are mistaken, m’lady.”’</p><p>Amy, who is used to his mouth not working in emotionally-charged situations, seems to gloss over the weird flourish and reddens even more as her face softens. “Oh.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>They stand in silence for a moment. Jake is still reeling from the multitude of discoveries from the past three minutes, namely: Amy Santiago likes him, and Jake Peralta is a moron.</p><p>Okay, maybe that second one isn’t much of a discovery.</p><p>“So…” Jake murmurs, not sure how to phrase this but knowing that he should probably, definitely, ask first this time. “Do you maybe want a do-over on that first kiss?”</p><p>There’s barely a second of hesitation before Amy is nodding, and when Jake makes good on his suggestion, Amy kisses back. It’s a little unsure, slightly awkward, and his shoulder bumps into the doorframe more than once. It’s the best kiss he’s ever had.</p>
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